The house on the main street called Square House was once the Bateman's Arms, the village pub. It closed nearly a hundred years ago and is now somebody's home. Middleton had a shop too, once. That's gone as well. So the village you arrive in is a compact run of limestone cottages, spaciously laid out on high ground above the River Bradford, with no pub, no shop, and 137 people at the last count.
What it has instead is the walking, and the walking is the reason to come.
A track drops from the village down into Bradford Dale, which runs steep-sided and wooded below. The river here has been interrupted by a succession of weirs — about six — built to encourage trout to breed, so the course is a series of clear pools reflecting the trees. There are beds of watercress, reed, king cups and rush, and if you're patient, kingfishers. A small swimming spot lies on the route. The dale also holds a clapper bridge and three packhorse bridges, which is a lot of bridges for one short stretch of water. J. B. Frith, writing about it, decided that "for peaceful loveliness and sheer prettiness, nothing in Derbyshire excels it."
For a pub you walk to Youlgreave, half an hour away by the tree-lined highway footpath or through the dale itself. There are three. The Bull's Head on Fountain Square runs up to five rotating cask ales and keeps a muddy boots menu, which tells you what kind of custom it expects. The Farmyard Inn on Main Street does Pie Wednesday, Curry Thursday and a Sunday carvery. The George on Church Street makes all its own chips and beefburgers and puts game on regularly. All three are a walk you'll have earned by the time you arrive.
St Michael and All Angels is the village chapel — small, a chapel of ease, disused for years before it was restored in 1899. The parish church proper is at Youlgreave. In the Domesday survey the manor belonged to Henry de Ferrers, came with a mill, and was worth sixteen shillings.
The name to know here is Bateman. In the 1820s the architect Thomas Bateman rebuilt most of the village, reusing the old mullioned windows so it kept its face, and made Middleton Hall his home. His grandson, another Thomas, grew up in that hall and became the county's most famous antiquary — the Barrow Knight, who opened 38 Bronze Age barrows in 1845 alone and over 500 across his life. He left instructions to be buried in unconsecrated ground on a hillside behind the former Congregational chapel. His tomb, iron-railed, is topped with a stone replica of a Bronze Age urn, echoing the barrows he had spent his life opening.
Middleton Castle, now in ruins, is where in 1643 the Royalist Sir Christopher Fulwood raised local lead miners for the King and was shot hiding in a cliff crevice. The bus stop is at The Square; route 172 runs through to Bakewell and Matlock. Matlock, eight miles off, is the nearest station.
On the last Saturday in May the village dresses its wells, as it has again since 1977, and puts on some music. For a place with no pub, it keeps busy enough.
